Ok, fine, so I did just order some Spanx. I figured it couldn’t hurt to try them on. I think it’s going to be hard for me to wear normal pants when I go back to work unless I figure out some way to smooth out the big drop-off of my stomach. I ordered four different versions of high-waisted underwear. I’ll report back on what works and what doesn’t for those interested.
Freedom! (graphic pics)
Today is one month since my surgery! Really, I did not anticipate I’d feel this good. Yes, I’m still weaker than I was, need to rest in the afternoon, and can’t lift anything more than ten pounds (although I’m convinced I actually CAN do this, I’m not allowed to).
Because it’s a month after surgery, I’m allowed to stop wearing the abdominal binder. I really thought I’d celebrate this – it’s not so terrible to wear, but it is itchy, it moves around, the velcro bites my skin. However, I also found myself a little bit nervous about this. The abdominal binder strangely made me feel secure and protected. Also, the compression feels good around my whole belly bulge. I asked my FORCE cohort about this, and several of them agreed that it is somewhat hard to let go, on this thread (although, I can tell you right now, there’s no way I’m wearing Spanx unless I’m going to a wedding). I am concerned, however, that some of them did wear something (whether binder or spanx) for several months. I trust my doctor though, so I’ll go with his recommendation and see how it feels for a few days. This morning I did not put the binder on after my shower – I did some stuff around the house, drove, did a couple of errands, and really it feels fine (minus the itching and velcro biting!).
So a month out, obviously things look a lot different on my body. It’s easy to find loads of pictures of what breasts look like at this stage. So I thought I’d share some less common pics. Below are pictures of my belly-button, the left end of my abdominal scar completely closed up, and the small part of the incision that every now and then is still a bit gooey but also seems to be healing.
Belly button
Abdominal Incision, completely sealed
Tiny area of abdominal incision resistant to close
Considering this is what the incision looked like in the beginning, I think it’s a huge improvement!
Overall, I’m thrilled with the progress so far. I feel like each day I resume more of my pre-surgery life. It feels really good!
Back Pain
I have been having some back pain. I’m trying to get as much work done from home as I can, and that means sitting at my desk. Normally I’m quite comfortable at my desk – I have a good quality chair and a rather ergonomic set up for working at the computer. But these days, if I sit here for longer than an hour, my back starts hurting. I try to sit up straight and have good posture, but it doesn’t seem to help. I posted something about this on Facebook, and my MIL’s cousin (who is having this surgery in May) said she hadn’t read anything about that in her research. I realized that I hadn’t either. So I posted this thread to the FORCE message board. I’m curious to see if any other people have this issue. I am assuming it has to do with my back muscles compensating for less core strength, but my core does seem a lot stronger each day, yet my back pain is not decreasing. I do think that getting back in the pool and resuming my regular exercise routine will help – just another week and a half until I can do that.
In other news, I emailed Dr Gimbel about two questions.
> 1) I am almost comfortable enough to go back to side sleeping. Will that compromise blood flow to the flaps? Do I need to worry about blood flow at this point (four weeks after surgery)? Or are there other reasons to continue sleeping on my back?
> I THINK IT’S OK TO SLEEP ON YOUR SIDE, BUT WOULD NOT SLEEP ON STOMACH YET.
> 2) I’ve read a lot about women massaging their breasts to avoid necrosis. Should I be doing that? If so, is there a specific way of doing it? Touching them still sort of weirds me out, but I’ll do it if it will avoid complications in the future.
I DON’T THINK MASSAGE WILL HELP AGAINST FAT NECROSIS. MASSAGE MOSTLY USED IN IMPLANT RECONSTRUCTION TO PREVENT CAPSULAR CONTRACTURE (hardening). I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND IT FOR YOUR TYPE OF RECONSTRUCTION. MOSTLY ALL THAT IS NEEDED NOW IS TIME TO ALLOW SWELLING TO GO AWAY (2-3 MORE MONTHS).
Side sleeping gets more comfortable each night with less breast soreness, and I’m glad to have his approval. While sleeping on my back, I was able to get to sleep, but once my husband’s alarm went off at 5am, I was unable to fall back to sleep because I couldn’t get comfortable again being stuck on my back. Usually when his alarm goes off, I just switch sides and fall back to sleep. This morning I was able to do that.
I’m also relieved to hear that he’s not worried about necrosis. I seem to read a whole lot about that – dying skin, dying tissue, hard and painful areas. Nonetheless, I am doing some general squeezing each night before bed, just to make sure nothing feels strange (although really, the whole thing feels strange!).
Belly after DIEP (graphic pics)
I always thought of my belly as two parts – top belly (from navel up to breasts) and bottom belly (from navel down to crotch). As a teenager and college student, whenever I gained weight, it was in my bottom belly. My top belly always stayed rather flat. As I gained weight throughout college, I eventually hit 160 pounds. I stayed at that weight for several years, convinced my body liked it there and I couldn’t ever gain more weight than that. Something happened though in my mid 20s (moving to New York, drinking a lot, and access to lots and lots of amazing food) and I did start to gain weight. Top belly began to grow. In fact, top belly grew larger than bottom belly. My weight began to fluctuate between 200 and 220 pounds; any time I lost or gained weight, top belly and bottom belly would shrink or grow but never be the same size. I couldn’t seem to get below 200, and I stayed that way until this surgery. Even after I had a baby at 35, bottom belly went back to being smaller than top belly. I did lose all of my baby weight (really, it was the only benefit of post-partum depression, during which I didn’t eat solid food for three months). Going into DIEP, I weighed 212 pounds.
Many many women talk about the benefit of DIEP is their new flat stomach. Clearly these women have a little paunch in their bottom belly and no fat in their top belly. As a fat girl, I knew that there was no way I was coming out of this with a flat stomach. I searched the internet endlessly trying to look for post-DIEP pictures of overweight women, to no avail. So, here, I present to you my new belly, which I call “whole belly.”
Whole belly post-DIEP
Whole belly post-DIEP
You can see, essentially what’s happened is that bottom belly was removed. Top belly was pulled down to meet the incision where bottom belly was. Thus, the result is just one whole belly (which used to be top belly) with a drop-off. I will say that top belly used to protrude even further than my breasts, and at least now it’s flat enough that my breasts protrude more than my stomach. So that’s a plus.
So now what? This clearly looks weird (and possibly there’s some swelling that might go down and some shifting that might still occur). Though I think it can be masked in clothes, it’s not ideal. My feeling is that if I work to lose weight (and thanks to DIEP, I am already down to 192 pounds) then whole belly will shrink as a whole. Of course, if I gain weight, then whole belly will grow as a whole. Eventually I will look like one of those men who belts his pants below his jolly full Santa Claus stomach. That image alone is enough to help me cut cookies out of my diet for a while.
The goal is, use the weight loss from the surgery as a springboard to continue to lose weight. Get whole belly down to semi-flat belly (along with wide ass and thunder thighs). Parlay whole belly into whole new me.
The Fortunate One
I admit, I tend to be fortunate more often than not – things work out in my favor quite often. Sometimes I say this is because I’m always prepared for the worst, I do what’s most practical, I have a strong work ethic, I stay calm, and I educate myself. Other times I chalk it up to luck. This time, I think it’s a bit of both.
On the FORCE boards today, someone posted about how her DIEP surgery is ruining her life. Several women are agreeing with her, reporting years of complications, extra surgeries, necrosis, pain, deformity, and more. These women have been through a hard time, and I feel really sad for them. I can’t imagine doing something like this, prophylactically at that, and having it turn out worse than it was before.
I’ve been lucky that so far, other than the painful muscle strain that lasted only a week, I haven’t had any significant complications. I know there’s still time – the abdominal incision could open, a flap could still fail, I could be completely asymmetrical when the swelling goes down. But so far, luck has been on my side.
What concerns me about these women is that they seem shocked that these sorts of complications could happen, and it sounds a lot like their doctors didn’t really warn them. I educated myself a lot on all of the complications that could arise – I knew about the problems with incisions not closing, the possibility of multiple surgeries to get a good appearance, flap failure and dying tissue. I read a whole lot and spoke to people who’ve had the surgery. By the time I got to my plastic surgeon, he didn’t really have to tell me that much and I had very few questions – I knew most of what I was getting into. With the exception of specifics to my body type and anatomy, I knew what to expect. He did warn me of a possible hernia if he ended up needing to use any rectus muscle (he did use a small bit), and he warned me that 2% of flaps do fail. Other than that, I think he assumed that because I came in with pages and pages of notes as well as my laptop on which I took notes while he spoke, I was already pretty knowledgeable.
I do really like my doctor, but I’ve come to realize, like many of my other doctors, that he isn’t the best at offering information. If you don’t have questions, there’s very little he’ll tell you (for instance, if I hadn’t gone in for that extra appt to check the muscle strain, I wouldn’t have known that I’m supposed to be wearing a regular-fitting bra right now and not an over-sized post-surgical bra). I think this is because doctors nowadays take for granted that we must all know what we’re doing because we have the internet to teach us all about it. Or, a doctor who’s done this a zillion times just goes through the motions during a consultation and some of the shpeil is just forgotten.
Still, no amount of reading in advance is going to ensure that no complications arise. But you can’t count on your doctor to tell you about all of them. If you want to get through something this challenging, you have to do your own homework. And I guess you have to have a little luck on your side, too.
Blogging BRCA 